Multiple people from the Jellico area were featured in a documentary film that received heavy consideration for the Academy Awards.
After moments of aerial footage, a picture of the then-Jellico Community Hospital is shown, with the caption: “Since 2005, over 190 rural hospitals have closed across the U.S., the majority of them in the South.”
So begins “If Dreams Were Lightning: Rural Healthcare Crisis,” a roughly 25-minute short film exploring how people from various backgrounds navigate access to health care in Appalachia.
The film, directed by Ramin Bahrani, was shortlisted for an Oscar nomination.
Among the 114 films that qualified for the Documentary Short Film category at the Academy Awards, 15 films advanced to the shortlist stage, one of them being “If Dreams Were Lightning,” according to a press release in December on the Oscars website.
“If Dreams Were Lightning” ended up not getting into the group of the final five films who all received an Oscar nomination.
About halfway through the short film’s runtime, there is an establishing shot of Harp Funeral Home in Jellico.
The caption over the image reads: “Today Jellico, TN has no hospital. But they do have three funeral homes.”
Harp Funeral Home co-owner James Meadors was interviewed in the documentary.
“It was good,” Meadors said after watching the film. “I was fearful the whole time on what it might be because sometimes you hear people on TV talk about: ‘That’s not exactly what I intended for it to be.’ But my part was good. I liked it.”
Meadors says in “If Dreams Were Lightning” that the day he was being interviewed was the 15-year anniversary of his wife’s burial.
“Any anniversary date like that brings emotions back to the surface,” Meadors told the Press. “It’s always a touchy moment.”
Jellico Alderman Marty Bowlin was also interviewed for the documentary.
“It’s something I did last year,” Bowlin said in January to the Press. “James Meadors actually told me he was needing a coal miner to do that part, and so they came to me, spoke, and I did it. So it was fun, something to do.”
Bowlin wears an apparatus to help with his breathing.
“I worked 29 years in a deep mine,” Bowlin said. “I chose that profession. That’s what I worked in. It took a toll on my body. I was disabled at an early age, but if you look back, most men, 40, 50-year-olds who were in the mine, they’re disabled. But like I said, that’s a profession I’ve chosen, and then here I am. Then the health care kinda fails you after that, after you lose your insurance that you’ve got at the mine or whatever, it kinda fails you after that.”
Bowlin said he has black lung disease.
“It meant a lot to me,” Bowlin said after watching the film. “It did. It’s kinda hard watching yourself on TV. You know what I’m saying? But I enjoyed it. It got a point across.”
Meadors said he hadn’t been on a television program in decades.
“Way back, it had to be in the ‘60s,” Meadors said. “Cumberland College put on a little ol’ program, ‘An Apple for Alfie.’ And they did a span, and there I was in the classroom and I saw myself on TV then. And back in 1978, there was a Jenkins hotel fire here, and there were seven people that lost their lives — and we did six of the funerals, and they came and did ‘World News’ on it. And I saw myself on it then.”
